Crazy Like A Fox

CHAPTER 23

Sugar maples flashed red on the top leaves, oaks blushed with a bit of yellow or orange on top. High color, about ten days away, perhaps a few more, electrified everyone; humans, horses, hounds, foxes, and all the birds who didn’t fly south became extra busy. Dens, nests, and roofs were repaired. Chimneys, if they hadn’t been cleaned, were cleaned now. Windows were caulked, firewood stacked. Neither man nor beast could afford to be lazy during fall, all the more so since you never really knew when winter would arrive.

This Monday, hounds had a day to relax, recharge after Saturday’s memorable hunt. Skiff trailered over Crawford’s hounds, which blended in with Jefferson Hounds as they walked out.

The air sparkled so Sister, Shaker, Betty, Tootie, Sam, and Yvonne walked across the footpath of the wildflower field, crawled over the hog’s-back jump into the now cut cornfield at After All. Black-eyed Susans, deep purple flowers as well as tiny white ones enlivened the long walk to the covered bridge. There hounds stopped, dashed into strong-running Broad Creek, drank, played a bit, then packed in as both huntsmen called them.

Roger, shiny and mostly black, walked shoulder to shoulder with young Angle.

Lifting his head, Roger noted, “Deer.”

“After All is full of them,” Angle replied. “A lot of fox, too. We hardly ever have a blank day here.”

“Good. Blank days mean hard work for nothing. Well, getting out of the kennels is good, but I want to run foxes,” Roger declared.

As hounds chattered so did the people.

“Ben Sidell had the marijuana burned. Yesterday,” Shaker informed them, a big smile on his face. “Wish I’d known. I’d have gone over for the spectacle.”

“Wonder if we’ll ever know who the planter was, or is,” Betty mused. “He couldn’t have been that bright. You don’t pass a rifle over someone’s head when dozens of people sit on the other side of your crop. He heard the horn. He saw the pack of hounds. Pretty stupid. As for burning crops, I think burnings aren’t made public. People would descend upon them to inhale.” She laughed.

“Hundreds of stoned people.” Yvonne kept her eyes on Pickens, who would turn his head to look at her. “You know, this dog is flirting with me.” She pointed to Pickens.

“Mom, he’s still young and he wants to be friends. The P litter is so sweet.”

“And I’m not,” Dragon sassed.

“What you are is an arrogant cur,” Cora pronounced with finality, making the other hounds laugh, that little intake of air they do.

“I guess protecting his crop blinded the man’s judgment,” Shaker said.

“If you point a rifle at someone or shoot their hound, you think that person isn’t going to retaliate?” Skiff found the episode unsettling.

“Years ago, Binky DuCharme’s son Arthur kept a still farther back from Old Paradise. There’s always been a still back there. Water’s so good. Of course, hounds got on a blazing run and smashed through it. All I could hear was tinkling glass.” Shaker laughed. “And the miracle was, not one hound with cut pads. We didn’t tell the sheriff’s department because Arthur is the son of one of our two non-speaking landowners. What a mess. Poor Arthur.” Shaker shrugged. “Binky had higher hopes for his son.”

“And his cousin, Margaret, is whip smart. So much for breeding,” Betty remarked.

“Brenden DuCharme, father of Alfred and Binky, wasn’t intellectual but he worked hard, was smart about business things,” Sister remembered; Brenden and his wife were alive, just barely, when she moved here.

“Margaret died your first year here. Now there was the paragon of fashion,” Betty recalled.

“She was kind to children. She patted my pony, said some good words when Mom brought me here,” Sister said. “Had to be 1953. I was old enough so I wasn’t a pain when we traveled. Remember those two-lane highways? You’d crawl through every town.”

“Funny how things pass, isn’t it? We see it with horses and hounds. The DuCharmes, a mixed bag.” Betty returned to intelligence being inherited. She mentioned her late father-in-law. “Mr. Franklin said Margaret died of a broken heart. She never complained. She put her energy into her sons, but there was a sadness there. At least, that’s what he said.”

“Don’t you think some people are just born sad?” Yvonne piped up.

“Depression, but that’s beyond sadness. Most drunks are depressives.” Sam surprised them. “I was not. I liked the taste. That’s the best explanation I can give.”

“You fought it off.” Sister complimented him.

“Thank you, but I am an alcoholic. I don’t drink but I will always be an alcoholic. I’m on guard,” he said.

“Your aunt Daniella can drink us all under the table.” Sister laughed.

Sam, laughing as well, agreed. “Woman’s got a hollow leg but you know, she’s not an alcoholic. A heavy drinker, yes, but not an alcoholic. Gray and I take her to church every Sunday, as you know. She’s a walking history book in search of a double bourbon.”

“It’s a genetic trick. Like a good nose in a hound, a genetic program. People aren’t any different. I think a lot of things run in families. I swear cancer does.” Skiff patted Reagan’s head as he slipped next to her.

“I believe that.” Yvonne nodded. “But maybe we all have cancer and something trips the wire. Know what I mean?”

“Well, something’s going on.” Shaker slid over the hog’s back. “I’m forty-four. Already lost three high school buddies to it. A couple of my friends have wives battling breast cancer. Scares me. Scares me because I don’t understand it.”

“Shaker, I think even doctors don’t understand it, but going back to bloodlines, you and I were talking the other day about how a quality often skips a generation. Our A line. Ardent, son of Asa, is a good hound and somewhat resembles his sire, but Aces and Angle, the grandsons of Asa, dead ringers. It’s uncanny. Same deep voices, same drive.”

“Tootie looks more like my mother than I do,” Yvonne noted.

“Maybe, but everyone knows I’m yours.” Tootie found it difficult to think she looked like her maternal grandmother, who was getting old.

Mentally, Tootie knew she would get old. Emotionally, she didn’t believe it.

—

Back at Roughneck Farm, Skiff and Sam loaded their hounds on the party wagon, a two-level trailer so hounds could choose where to ride. Half of them were asleep once they found their berth.

Sister, Shaker, Betty, and Tootie called each hound by name.

“Pansy.” Tootie motioned to the pretty girl.

“I liked the walk.” Pansy slid by Tootie to go into the girls’ side of the kennel.

Each hound waited until his or her name was called then stepped forward to go either right or left. Yvonne stood back to watch, surprised at how obedient the hounds were. They were happy creatures.

Once everyone was in their respective places, Sister offered drinks. They trooped up to the house, gratefully drank iced tea or soda, chatted.

Then Sister walked everyone back to the kennels.

“Skiff, before you go, let me show you something. Won’t take long. Yvonne, Sam, you all can come inside, too.”

She walked them all back to the record room. Betty pulled down a green leather volume from 1972. She opened it on the desk inside that room.

“You can see our records go back to 1887. We are so fortunate to have them.”

Betty pointed to a 1972 staff photo. “This was the year before Sister was elected Master. She’s a whipper-in.”

“Betty, they don’t want to see that.”

“Yes, we do.” Skiff and Yvonne studied the photo.

“You look exactly the same.” Yvonne smiled as Tootie looked at Sister.

“What a fib.” Sister laughed. “But here. This is the biggest help.” She flipped through the hound photos, each accompanied by a pedigree. “I can follow a bloodline for one hundred and thirty years.”

“Astonishing.” Skiff was impressed.

“I was seventeen. Last year of high school and hunting with Jefferson.” Sam looked back. “Then off to Harvard, where I hunted with Myopia.”

“There are hounds in Boston?” Yvonne was surprised.

“Outside the city. Myopia was founded in 1882. Of course, when they found out I hunted in Virginia, they actually invited me to hunt with them. What a surprise when I turned out to be black plus, forgive me, I could ride.” He laughed.

“Bet it made them competitive.” Sister knew the story.

Sam smiled, which made him even more attractive. The man, in his early sixties, didn’t have an extra ounce on his frame, and neither did Gray, his older brother.

“Sam, tell them.” Sister prodded him.

“Well, second hunt, they knew I was black, so those that could stand it did. Those that were horrified said not a word to me, but one of the whippers-in didn’t show. I volunteered and did just fine. Anytime you are from Virginia, other hunts do get competitive, but the truth was I was young, fearless, and could ride anything. And I did. Those white folks who were offended to have me in the midst couldn’t keep up, so it was a moot point.”

“I can certainly understand that. The first time I walked down the runway you could hear the intake of all that breath.” Yvonne relayed her beginning. “But I sold clothing. The stuff I wore brought in the money. Before too long other young women of color, as we used to say, were walking the boards.”

“It’s hard to believe things were that way, and I grew up in the South.” Betty was sincere.

“Betty, it’s still that way for some people.” Yvonne looked at her sport Swatch. “When it’s twelve-fifteen here it’s 1930 in Mississippi.”

“You know, I actually think in some ways Mississippi is ahead of say, Iowa.” Sam defended the often attacked state.

“You’re probably right—and if I’m correct, I have a riding lesson.” Yvonne looked at Sam.

“You do. Get in that big-ass car of yours and follow us to Beasley Hall. I’m going to put you up on Don Juan.”

Skiff exclaimed, “What a sweetheart. He’s called Don Juan because you’ll fall in love with him.”

After everyone left, Sister returned to the record room, pulling down the books from 1947 to 1954. Tootie happily played with puppies in the puppy palace. She’d attack her other chores later.

Sister studied every single pedigree in those seven years. Slapping shut 1954, she leaned back in the seat, exhaled. “I’ll be damned.”

She hurried back to the house. The landline proved clearer than her cellphone.

“Marion.”

“What did you find out? You have that tone,” Marion replied, not at all surprised.

“Weevil had an odd way of naming hounds. If a mother’s first initial started with B, he might name some of the girls Birdie, Betty, etc. But then he would, out of the blue, name a girl Christine. Never did this with the boys.”

“Yes.” Marion waited.

“The nonconforming names were those of women he was rumored to have had affairs with, like Christine Falconer. Two years later, Christine bred, had her puppies properly named except for Madge, Christine’s—the human’s—daughter, in real life. He used every name you gave me plus the ones down here.”

“That devil.”

“And he called his bitch pack his ‘Fast Ladies.’ That’s brazen if ever anything was.”

“Well, I don’t know if we’re any closer to finding out what’s going on but we’re certainly getting a sharper picture of Weevil.”

Sister had informed Marion of the Weevil sighting, plus his protecting Tootie.

“This is what drives me crazy, Marion. I feel like I’m so close, like it’s right under my nose and I don’t see it.”

“Want a wild guess?”

“From you? Always.” Sister trusted Marion, as did most people who had the good fortune to know her or work with her.

“Tootie is beautiful, heavenly, a beautiful rider. She’s so intelligent. If Weevil is Weevil and he has seen her, I predict he will…maybe not make a pass, but he will try to make a connection. Do ghosts make passes?”

“Well, there’s The Ghost and Mrs. Muir.” Sister cited a wonderful movie from the forties.

“A ghost in love,” Marion mused.

“The longer this goes on, the more I think this is a flesh-and-blood man. Why be Weevil, I don’t know. He knows hunting. He asks questions about the past. He blows the cowhorn. Is it a signature or is it a warning?”

“You’ll find out.”

“You might be right about Weevil contacting Tootie again. She has no interest in men or women, as much as I can gather.”

“Sister, a drop-dead gorgeous man protects and defends you. I know drop-dead gorgeous is a play on words, but there you have it. Any woman, even if she were gay, would be drawn to this knight in shining armor. Wouldn’t you?”

“Of course, but then I always displayed a weakness for good-looking men, as have you, my sweet.”

“But when?”

“When what?”

“When did you discover men?”

“I can’t think that far back.”

“Yes, you can. Don’t be coy.”

“Really, my first little whiff of lust? I guess I was sixteen. I didn’t really get it until I was twenty.”

“I rest my case.”